Graduation day at the police academy

Instructors liken the recruits' training to pouring a gallon of milk into a shot glass.

By CHAD SMITHCampus correspondent

At "Hank's Garage" in northwest Gainesville on Friday, police arrived to find the shop owner holding a tire iron over a bloody-faced customer.

Well, not really.

The police were Santa Fe Community College Law Enforcement Academy recruits, the shop was a storage garage on the academy's complex and the owner and the customer were academy instructors. The blood, of course, was fake.

But the recruits' adrenaline was running high.

Recruits Colin Williams, 23, and Melinda Suggs, 22, who arrived at the scene in retired squad cars, are among a class of 12 recruits who graduated from the academy Tuesday with their sights set on entering the rewarding, yet risky and ever-changing field of law enforcement.

For about a week before graduation, the group was put through real-life scenarios - from the scene at the garage to domestic disputes complete with a talking baby doll and screaming parents. There are things recruits do right. There are also things they do wrong - things that could get them killed in a real-life situation.

Click here for video of Police Academy training.

Academy instructor and University of Florida Police Sgt. Hank Spurlin said in the scenario week, recruits are put through so much that they aren't expected to be perfect. Quoting a fellow instructor, he said, what the recruits' minds are put through is akin to pouring a milk jug into a shot glass.

After every exercise, a group of instructors talks with the pair of recruits about what just happened, giving them the highlights and lowlights before the partners write up their incident reports.

The goal is for them to learn to pay attention to everything that's going on around them and to establish control at the scene, Spurlin said. They'll get months of this type of training with the agency that hires them, he said, but the academy is trying to give them a head start.

Meghan Wooten, a 22-year-old recruit, was approaching a vehicle after pulling it over last week in an exercise. As she neared the car, a gunman who was lying down in the back seat sat up and shot her.

Next time, she said, she'll be on the lookout.

"We do basic stuff, too," she said. "We don't just prepare for the worst. But you have to."

With several family members in law enforcement and as a dispatcher for the UF Police Department, Wooten said she's known for a long time that she wanted to be a cop.

And although she's only one of two women in her class and acknowledges that police work is dominated by men, she doesn't see a distinction between her and her male counterparts.

"The only difference between me and the guys in there is I have a ponytail," she said. "The same is expected of me as it is for them," she added, "and that's the way that I like it."

Times change

The 12 recruits are going into a line of work much different from when academy commander Chris Wagoner entered law enforcement about 25 years ago.

"When I became a police officer it was more of a 'find the bad guy and arrest the bad guy' kind of thing," said Wagoner, a commander in the Santa Fe Community College Police Department.

Now, he said, 80 percent of the job is communicating, either through talking or through writing reports.

"If you can't talk to people, you're not going to make it in this job," Wagoner said.

Today's recruits are better educated and have a greater sense of civic responsibility than they did a few decades ago, he said.

And they have to.

The constant threat of terrorism, even in North Central Florida, has changed the nature of police work, Wagoner said.

"We don't just have to worry about the bank robber with the gun anymore," he said. "We have to worry about the terrorist with the body bomb."

Even without the threat of terrorism, police have always been in the line of fire. And already this year, five police officers have been killed in Florida, according to the Officer Down Memorial Page, an online database of law enforcement deaths.

Last year, Florida and Texas ranked second in the number of officers killed with nine each. Virginia ranked first with 10.

And the death of Gainesville Police Lt. Corey Dahlem in April will always stay with recruit Williams, who with the rest of his class attended Dahlem's funeral.

"He was doing his job," Williams said, "and that hit us all very hard."

Dahlem was fatally struck by a vehicle on W. University Avenue in the celebration aftermath of the University of Florida's second straight basketball national championship.

Despite Williams' experience in the Marines - he was a part of the initial invasion of Iraq in 2003 - he said he will always feel some level of fear when he puts on his police uniform after he gets a job. The key will be controlling that fear, he said.

The job, with all its risks, also comes with its share of perks, Wagoner said.

Entry-level cops will make about $35,000 in Florida in their first year, he said, on top of good retirement plans and family benefits.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average annual salary for a police officer in Gainesville was $39,000 in May 2006. Nationally, the average was more than $48,000. The salary for Florida Highway Patrol officers is nearly $39,000 in South Florida and nearly $34,000 in the rest of the state, said FHP Sgt. Tim Roufa, who is in charge of recruiting.

But for recruit Wooten, the job will be much more than an occupation. Already, she said, she's started to undergo a "lifestyle change." In restaurants, for example, she now faces the door so she can be on the watch for suspicious people.

The actual work, like putting hands on people to control them, also will take some getting used to, she said.

But she's confident that with her training, she's going to do well when she gets to wear a badge.

And she, with her 11 classmates, will do so aware of the old police motto "to protect and to serve," once they get over the nerves of those first few calls.

"You're not ... used to walking around with a gun on your side," she said. "That's an incredible amount of not just power, but responsibility."

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